1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device for dispensing oblong objects, in particular those having a substantially polygonal, circular or elliptical cross section, and to the container equipped with such a dispensing device.
2. Description of Related Art
Many objects having an elongate shape, in particular those having a substantially polygonal, circular or elliptical cross section, are used as consumables. Such objects are, for example, strips, including test strips in the form of rigid bands or lamellae used for example for diagnostic or monitoring purposes in the medical field. Other objects to be dispensed having an oblong shape may also be for example bandages, or food products such as strips of chewing gum, toothpicks, orange sticks, chopsticks, or the like.
For obvious reasons, particularly hygiene reasons, but also to avoid any degradation and thus improve the preservation time of the objects, they are protected from external contamination and/or from physico-chemical attack resulting from the relative humidity level, or light, in particular UV radiation and other chemical substances, or else from mechanical degradation.
Also for hygiene, preservation and protection reasons, many dispensing devices have been designed to allow the oblong objects to be dispensed one by one, so as to dispense the precise number of objects required and thus to avoid any contamination due to unintentional removal of an object.
Such object-dispensing devices must be simple, inexpensive to produce and easy to use.
Many devices for dispensing substantially flat objects have been described in the technical literature, in particular in that formed by published patent applications and/or patents.
In a first document of the prior art (U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,308), a device for storing moisture-sensitive test strips is described.
The storage device appears to be formed from a container, which includes a desiccant, and from a lid assembled so as to be able to be disengaged from the opening of said container by a translational movement followed by a rotational movement.
When in use, the lid is disengaged from the opening of the container by a translational movement in the direction parallel to the direction of extraction of the test strips, and then by a rotational movement, so as to allow access to the test strips. Said test strips are themselves partly expelled from the container by means of a spring, so as to allow the user to grip them.
This dispensing device has many technical disadvantages such as, for example, the fact that several strips are pushed out of the container simultaneously, consequently increasing the risk of contamination and/or mechanical deterioration of the test strips not extracted each time the container is opened. In addition, when a test strip is gripped, the user's fingers or the tools for gripping the strips come into contact with several of these strips, with the risk of degrading or contaminating, by external pollution, the active surfaces of said strips.
This device is also complex and relatively expensive to produce as it requires the use of a device for extracting the test strips using a spring and a lid of complex kinematics. Another drawback of this system is that it generally requires, when opening it, the use of both hands, making it relatively awkward.
Another document (U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,064) describes a device for dispensing test strips that includes a desiccant and a lid which, once closed, prevents the ingress of moisture. Unlike other devices, in particular the one mentioned above, this device does not have a means for dispensing the test strips that is designed to push on them, the dispensing taking place by inverting the container. At the moment when it is opened, the lid of the container swings away, by rotating about an axis perpendicular to the strip dispensing axis, so as to be partly clear of the opening of the container and to allow the strips to be removed. The strips leaving the container are deflected toward a stop by means of a surface of the lid facing the opening, thus preventing the strips from falling out.
In the same way as in the case of the device described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,308, the above dispensing device has disadvantages owing to the fact that, when opening the container, several strips may be extracted simultaneously, without being able to check the number thereof, thus risking unintentional deterioration of certain test strips put back into the container. Another drawback of this device is due to the fact that the opening for extracting the strips is of large size, thus increasing the risk of contaminating the inside of the container.
None of the devices of the prior art gives satisfactory results, as these devices do not allow the number of objects or strips extracted from the container to be checked. Furthermore, such devices do not make it possible to guarantee no contamination or soiling of the strips inadvertently extracted and then put back into the container, as they are not used, being redundant, thus degrading the quality with which the strips are stored. Furthermore, the dispensing devices of the prior art are often made up from many mechanical parts, which increases both their production cost and creates difficulties in producing and handling these devices.